Bloxham's Great Game of Genocide is
both broader and narrower than the title might suggest. The work divides
into three thematic partsmass murder in an international system;
international response and responsibility in the genocide era; and from
response to recognition. The parts are broader in dealing not only with
Armenians but also with Greeks, Kurds, and Assyrians. They are narrower
in focusing mainly on the years 1915-23, thereby treating only
superficially the period before World War I.

Therefore, the study falls short in its
argument of some issues. For example, the Zeytun revolt of 1895 and
Adana incidents of 1909 get short shrift despite their central
importance in Ottoman-Armenian relations. Bloxham is silent about the
expectation of Armenian revolutionary committees in attracting Western
intervention at the nearby Mediterranean ports of İskenderun and Mersin.
Warships of seven countriesBritain, France, Germany, Austro-Hungary,
Italy, Russia, and the United Statesdid in fact anchor in the Mersin
roadstead in April 1909 but refrained from landing men. The events of
1895 and 1909 were crucial in preparing the psychological climate of
1915.

Bloxham relies primarily on Western archival
materials supplemented by the pertinent published sources. He has done
no research work in the Ottoman archives nor utilized the contemporary
Ottoman press. This reduces the validity of his conclusions, for the
Ottoman archives are much more informative on relations between the
Ottoman state and its subjects than any other source. These documents,
which are open to the scrutiny of scholars, answer many questions
regarding the Armenian issue. Indeed, not much can be known about
Armenians in Anatolia without reference to them, and no historical
conclusions can be reached without them.

Too much reliance on secondary sources, at
the expense of essential Ottoman primary material, inevitably leads to
unfounded claims. For instance, Bloxham quotes Armenian writers'
inflated figures of the number of Armenians killed by the Ottomans
during World War I, alleging that "one million Armenians died, half of
the prewar population and two-thirds of those deported." In fact,
1,295,000 Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire in 1914; 702,900 of
these were subject to relocations in 1915-16, and very large numbers of
the displaced persons survived according to documents of the Directorate
for Public Security and the Directorate for the Settlement of Tribes and
Immigrants of the Ottoman Ministry of the Interior. Meanwhile,
everywhere in the text, the term "deportation" is applied to the
Armenian displacements, which is erroneous, for the Armenians were moved
within the same country, not expelled to another country.

Another weakness: the work presents a
one-sided story of Armenian accusations without looking at the overall
context of what took place and ignoring the Ottoman experience. Bloxham
is thus wrong to assess the Ottoman government's treatment of its
Armenian subjects from autumn 1914 to summer 1915 as genocide. The
relocations were matters of national security and military necessity
under wartime circumstances. The author touches lightly on the vital
point that "genocide" is a clearly defined crime in international law.
Article 2 of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948 states that it involves the
"intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial,
or religious group, as such." Ottoman archives in Istanbul are full of
government decrees and regulations proving the contrary.

The book has other problems. The writing and
organization is frustrating with many confusing statements and a great
deal of repetition. One would have liked to read more about the Ottoman
personalities and Turkish nationalist figures the author so briefly
mentions. Bloxham is also highly selective in his coverage: he neglects
the Armenian rejection of the International Court of Justice serving as
the forum for legal resolution of claims of genocide and underplays the
massacre of Turks by Armenian armed bands during the French occupation
of Cilicia.

Misinterpretations mar the book: Bloxham
writes that "Turkish nationalists were only too happy to see tens of
thousands of Armenians departing from Cilicia" in 1921, which is not
true. The author repeats the fantastic story that the Ottoman statesman
Cemal Pashaminister of the navy, commander of the Fourth Army and
governor-general of Syria and western Arabia in 1914-17through an
Armenian intermediary, contacted Russia and "in return for marching on
Istanbul with military support from the Allies, asked for the leadership
of a future independent Anatolian Turkey, including the autonomous
provinces of Armenia, Kurdistan, Cilicia, Syria, and Mesopotamia;
Istanbul and the control of the straits would be given up." No credible
evidence substantiates these claims.

Spelling and typographical mistakes dot the
book, such as Arnavutköj for Arnavutköy, Radjun for Radju, Gourard for
Gouraud, Akullioglu for Akıllıoğlu, Dörtyöl for Dörtyol, and Aloannis
for İoannis. Factual errors are also a problem. In Cilicia, the region
that corresponded to the Ottoman province of Adana and sanjak of
Maraş, Armenians did not comprise 20-25 percent of the population but
only about 10 percent. Turcomans are not just a "small Islamic
population" in Anatolia; Turks and Turcomans come from common descent
and are one and the same thing. In mid-March 1915, director of the
Ottoman Special Organization was not Bahaettin Şakir but Hüsamettin (Ertürk);
nor was Şakir the general director of police of Halil Pasha's (Kut) army
in 1918; the only public position Şakir held was membership on the
central committee of the Committee of Union and Progress in 1912-18.
Enver Pasha never served as an irregular soldier in counterinsurgency
operations in Macedonia. The Osmaniye-İslahiye-Radju military supply
line was a railway, not a road; Greek troops disembarked at İzmir on May
15, 1919, not on May 16; the Turkish city of Adalia (Antalya) was never
occupied by Greece. The final illustration between pages 146 and 147
must be a fake, as no Ottoman administrative official of the World War I
era would wear a fashionable Western-style tie and go bareheaded.

While this bold enterprise comprises certain
valuable inquiry, its core thesis is no more than an assertion, and its
overall argument is not convincing. Still, Bloxham's book might
stimulate further research on the Armenian issue, in particular, and on
genocide analysis in generala welcome development, as there is dire
need for objective and rational analyses of these difficult subjects.

Yücel Güçlü
is first counsellor at the Turkish Embassy in Washington, D.C.

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